Shredding Immigrants’ rights

Don Flynn says Mahmood’s immigration policy turns sharply to the right and marks an end to fairness of any kind

“Firm but Fair” served the Labour Party as the mantra for its immigration policies from the 1960s until the first decade of the new millennium.  

It appeared at the point when the party abandoned its brief defence of open borders for Commonwealth citizens under the leadership of Hugh Gaitskell, adjusting to what it saw as a new reality of permanent hostility on the part of “ordinary” Brits to “coloured” immigration.   

During periods in government in the mid to late 1960s, Labour passed race relations acts which pushed back against the widespread discrimination of the “colour bar” of that period of history, but also implemented, in the form of the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, some of the most restrictive and racist pieces of immigration control legislation attempted in Britain. 

For a period, the status of Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies was subdivided into people with an ancestral connection to the country (i.e. mostly White) and others whose connection came via a British colony or protectorate (mostly Black).  

The mess created by the shambolic thinking of Labour ministers of that time was cleared up after a fashion by a Conservative government and its 1971 Immigration Act, which still forms the basis for immigration control to this day. Under this settlement, the notion of Commonwealth citizen was reduced to an historical artefact and the basis for control became a uniform system of restrictive measures that applied equally, or at least supposedly so, to everyone without a formal right of abode in the UK.  “Firm” definitely, but the question of fairness became something to be battled out in the immigration appeal tribunals and the higher courts. 

Nevertheless, Labour has retained a higher degree of credibility among people of immigrant stock across the years because it has been associated with at least a residual defence of basic human rights when it came to questions of racial equality, respect for diversity and family life as opposed to “the other lot”. Through the long years of opposition to the Thatcherite governments, Labour MPs took on masses of casework supporting their constituents’ human rights.  On finally being elected to government in 1997, it consolidated its reputation by scrapping the hated primary purpose rule that blocked family reunification for hundreds of thousands of, mainly, South Asian residents.  It also initiated a debate on the underlying principles of immigration policy, which emphasised the need for an “evidence-based approach.”    

Settlement rights roll back

Fast forward to the present day, and it seems that the current Labour leadership is declaring war on principles which it once regarded as the rock on which a fair immigration policy could be based.  The white paper published in May 2025 was heralded by the prime minister with a post on X, which declared that “Settlement in the UK is a privilege that is earned, not a right.” This has been taken up on countless subsequent occasions by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood as well as by loyalist MPs charged with explaining what is clearly considered an unpopular set of policies by the residue of constituency party activists and leftist MPs.   

The notion of “fairness” for most Labour supporters over the years, even by those who want to see lower numbers of incomers, has been taken to mean that people who enter under a set of rules which lay down clear conditions for their residence, will acquire a right of settlement on the conclusion of an initial period of temporary stay.  Over the years, this initial period has grown for people holding work permits from four to five years under policy changes implemented by Labour in 2026.   In 2012, the Con-Lib Dem coalition increased the qualifying period for family members joining a settled person from two to five years, with this becoming the standard qualifying time for all groups of migrants, including refugees. 

The alleged need for these extensions was opposed by migrant rights groups at the time of their introduction.  Feminist groups working with migrant communities pointed out that the extension of qualifying periods for family members entailed the risk of trapping vulnerable individuals, usually but not exclusively women, in abusive relationships. Similar arguments were made by trade unions and others concerned with workers’ rights who cited evidence of exploitation arising from the dependence of migrant employees on the approval of the bosses who had sponsored their visas. The move towards longer qualifying periods was not halted by these objections, but there was at least some assurance for those affected that if five years of waiting could be endured, then settlement was attainable as the final reward. 

It is this assurance that Labour now seems intent on upending with its new proposals, which aim at a doubling of the standard qualifying period from five to ten years, with the prospect of further extensions for people not considered to have met high enough year levels of contribution to the British economy to fifteen years or more. 

While the baseline qualifying period is fixed at ten years, this will be adjusted by factors which supposedly relate to the value of the contribution made by the individual migrant. For example, highly paid people earning over £125,140 a year will be eligible for settlement after just three years.  Those on £50,270 will be able to settle after five years. On the other hand, for people in jobs considered low-skilled or medium-skilled, the baseline starting point for the calculation would be 15 rather than ten years. This group includes social care workers. 

To make things even more complicated, the research briefing on the measures lodged in the House of Commons library notes that the qualifying period would be extended for any person who claims benefits, adding possibly another five to ten years to their baseline. Refugees will be expected to wait 20 years to qualify for settlement, unless they are considered to have entered the UK illegally, in which case the total waiting time will add up to 30 years.  

Shabana Mahmood, as home secretary, claims these changes are needed because the Conservative government allowed between two and  3.6 million long-term, non-EU immigrants into the UK during the post-Brexit migration arrangements during the so-called “Boris Wave” of 2021-24. With a standard qualifying period of five years, this could mean that anything up to 800,000 people could become eligible for settlement by 2029.  

It has become convenient for Starmer and his Labour colleagues to present this as an unconscionable claim being made on the goodwill of British society, and therefore must be prevented from happening.  Much is made of the fact that one of the positive features of settled status for migrants is the fact that they become eligible for welfare benefits on the same basis as British citizens.   

The ire particularly directed against social care workers, liable to an extended qualifying period of 15 years, shows something of the government’s determination to close down any entitlement for in-work benefits whilst still retaining them as members of the workforce.  In addition, as officials of the Unison trade union, which organises social care workers, have noted, it also exposes the absence of any plan on the part of the government to raise levels of pay or improve career progression across the sector, despite its much-vaunted ambitions for a high-prestige national care service.  If workers are being paid the wages they deserve, there is no need for anxiety about excessive claims for top-up benefits supplementing low wages. 

If allowed to go through, the government’s proposal presages the vast extension of a labour force segmented by varying levels of security (or lack of the same), with hundreds of thousands marked off from the mainstream of rights by immigration statuses which put them on “standard”, extended, and hyper-extended routes to settlement, with a privileged few offered better deals because of their earning levels. 

At the bottom of the pile will be people who have been most in need of the measure of “fairness” that was once part of Labour’s offer to the immigrants and refugees who were arriving on British shores.   

Some argue that a policy response of this sort is needed to counter the commitments made by the Conservative and Reform-UK parties to roll back even more of the rights of migrant and refugee people if they win elections in the years ahead.  In truth, it is not hard to detect the influence of something quite different in statements from Mahmood and others in here, “Blue Labour” current, which challenges the idea that it is all a ploy to quash the appeal of the far right.  What is revealed by statements about settlement being a privilege and not a right is the emergence of an ideology with deep roots in the Labourite political tradition, which needs no prompting from Farage and other xenophobes when it comes to issues like migration.  But that is the subject of another article.